Europe

This article is so beyond unhinged. Still upvoted because a supposedly reputable US paper putting something like this out is news in itself. It feels like reading the Soviet Pravda.

Silicon Valley and the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, have a strained relationship. Regulators in Brussels blame American tech giants for everything from the struggles of European startups to teenage depression. American tech firms whinge that they are targeted by jealous Europeans.

So mocking the point of one side while regurgitating the other verbatim is what passes for journalism in the US now? No, dear author, the EU does not blame tech giants "for everything", they blame them for blatantly breaking the law.

The previous commission policed America’s tech giants in various ways. It blocked takeovers it saw as anti-competitive, such as Amazon’s attempt to buy iRobot, a maker of robo-vacuums. And it introduced a thicket of new laws, including the Digital Services Act (DSA), to regulate social media, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), to keep tech firms from competing unfairly, and the Artificial Intelligence Act, to govern the use of the emerging technology. Rule-breakers can be hit with fines which, in the case of the DMA, can reach a tenth or more of the firm’s global revenue.

So having actual fines and laws that apply to everyone is discriminatory to US companies. I guess having a functional justice system is foreign to them.

The new commission may do more of the same. Henna Virkkunen, a Finn, has been put in charge of tech. People in her team say they expect continuity, though the emphasis may shift from writing new laws to enforcing existing ones. Reining in big tech still seems popular with voters.

So admittedly, nothing will change. But!

Yet changing circumstances may require a new approach. One difference is that economic growth is back in focus. Last year Ursula von der Leyen, the commission’s returning president, asked Mario Draghi, a former head of the European Central Bank, to write a report on the continent’s waning competitiveness. The resulting tome pointed to Europe’s weakness in tech as a cause of its woes. Some recommendations that could also benefit American tech giants, including cutting red tape and boosting access to cloud infrastructure for Europe’s startups, were mentioned in the instructions Mrs von der Leyen issued to the new commissioners.

Some wishful thinking where if von der Leyen says "please make it easier to comply for European startups" means you don't have to follow the laws any more if you are a big US company.

Even more important is the re-election of Donald Trump

Cat's out of the bag. BTW, it's not a re-election, it's an election, the incumbent was Biden. But keep celebrating, ghouls.

X allegedly failed to comply with a number of DSA rules, such as providing data access for researchers. A decision will probably be made in the new year and could result in a fine of up to 6% of the firm’s global revenue. In September J.D. Vance, the incoming vice-president, seemed to suggest that America should withdraw support for nato in retaliation for European action against X.

This is so brain-dead that it's laughable. Europe is very well able to defend its territory by itself. What it is not able to do is defend the Western world's interests across the world by itself. If Trump crashes NATO because of X, Americans will indeed get transported back to the "great 50s", except not the American 50s, but the German 50s. The US is built on global trade, and crashing that would only hurt the US.